# virt-sparsify > Make virtual machine drive images thin-provisioned. > NOTE: Use only for offline machines to avoid data corruption. > More information: . - Create a sparsified compressed image without snapshots from an unsparsified one: `virt-sparsify --compress {{path/to/image.qcow2}} {{path/to/image_new.qcow2}}` - Sparsify an image in-place: `virt-sparsify --in-place {{path/to/image.img}}`